It appears that ABM is mounting a serious assault on jobs, with reports flooding in from across LU of positions being slashed.
Numerous stations with three or more cleaners on a shift are losing at least one position, with any agency cleaners first in the firing line. Many are being told they have to accept redeployment to a new station, often nowhere near their current one.
Some cleaners are being told by ABM supervisors and bosses that the pressure to make cuts is coming directly from TfL/LUL. We shouldn’t allow ABM bosses to use that fact, if indeed it’s true, to get themselves off the hook for making these cuts. But, if true, it does mean that we need to up the intensity of our fight against outsourcing. Instead of telling a contractor to cut jobs, TfL/LUL should be employing cleaners directly.
One pretext for the cuts, as we’ve previously reported, is that ABM committed to reduce the amount of agency labour on the job when it took over the consolidated contract. It has taken many agency staff from agencies like AGS on a permanent basis, but now appears to be trying to further reduce the amount of agency labour by... cutting jobs! We say: sack the agencies, not the workers!
These cuts make RMT’s recently ratified policy to move towards an industrial dispute and strike ballot of all Tube cleaners even more urgent.
